Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

“I thought you were a good cook. Last night you knew what you were doing.”

  She smiled. “I was cutting the bread. That I can handle. Fern did everything else.” She took another delicate nibble of the concoction on her plate. It went down her throat without any problem. “I’m learning to be a better cook, though. I’ve done some baking—cookies, mostly. Randy Rideout thinks the store-bought are better, but he doesn’t have much taste.”

  “His tastelessness is a genetic thing. He’s Glenn Rideout’s son.” Jed dug into his food with more enthusiasm than Erica could muster. “You’ve probably already figured this out about Rockwell,” he went on, “but there are no decent restaurants. Bars, yeah. But if you want some Chinese, or Mexican, or even just a perfectly cooked steak, you’re not going to find it here.”

  “Granted, Rockwell isn’t New York City. But it has its compensations.”

  He chuckled. She liked the way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled—and she wished she didn’t notice things like that about him. “What compensations might those be?” he asked, his tone holding a clear challenge.

  “The peace and quiet. The clean air. The way the snow stays white all winter long. In Boston—and I’m sure in New York—the snow is usually gray within a day of hitting the ground. Not here.”

  “In New York, the snow usually doesn’t stick around more than a day. They’ve got municipal employees who plow the streets and sidewalks.”

  “Yes, and the pollution probably helps the snow to melt faster, too,” Erica pointed out. “Particulate matter in the air contributes to global warming, you know.” Dangerously pedantic, she thought, silencing herself with a sip of wine. “In Rockwell, you can plant a garden out your back door and eat the very vegetables you’ve grown.”

  “Gardening’s a lot of work,” Jed said mildly. “Some people enjoy it. I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Did you garden when you lived here?”

  He gestured toward the window. “That whole field behind the house used to be corn and potatoes. I spent a lot of summer days working for my grandfather. Not fun.” He ate a little of the stew, then helped himself to a slice of bread. “Tell me, Erica, someone with your schooling, you could have gotten a teaching job anywhere. Why Rockwell?”

  “I liked the name,” she admitted, then smiled. “I liked the size and location, too. I wanted to live and work in a small town, one where my students might not have access to the cultural benefits of a more cosmopolitan community. Rockwell fit the bill on all those counts. And then the name. Rockwell. I pictured Norman Rockwell.”

  Jed laughed so hard he started to cough. “Norman Rockwell? Hell, you associate Norman Rockwell with a town that has one bar for every three citizens?”

  “With antlers on the walls,” Erica conceded, joining his laughter. “All right. Rockwell has less in common with Norman Rockwell than I thought it would. With the quarry nearly mined out, there’s too much unemployment. And all the bars with the antlers…” She sighed, experiencing a genuine sympathy for her adopted home and its economic woes. “But there’s something pure here.”

  “What?” Jed was still smiling, but his eyes held a challenge. “What’s pure about this place?”

  She searched her mind for an answer. The air, the white snow, but what else? Kids here used bad language and bullied one another. Adults had affairs and got pregnant. Her best friend dyed her hair bright red and set her sights on Derrick Messinger. Glenn Rideout hired a lawyer to protect his presumed interests in the ownership of a box. Rockwell even had its homeless: that strange, mumbling guy named Toad. Whenever she saw him shambling along the street, smelling like hot tar and morning breath, he’d issue incoherent comments about God and religion that Erica preferred not to listen to.

  “I don’t want to be a city person,” she finally said, even though that didn’t really answer Jed’s question. “I want to be in touch with nature, connected to the earth. I don’t want to walk on concrete all the time. I want to walk on grass and dirt.”

  “Mud,” Jed muttered, then chuckled. “We’ve got grass and dirt in New York. It’s called Central Park. You’ve got it in Boston, too. Boston Common, right? And that other place, where they have the Pops concert on the Fourth of July.”

  “The Esplanade,” she informed him. “But those are contained parks surrounded by city. It’s not like that here. Here you’ve got grass and dirt and trees and mountains for miles around.”

  “And long, winding two-lane roads, and there’s always some truck loaded with logs right in front of you, doing twenty miles an hour and you can’t pass him. In New York, you don’t even need a car. You can walk everywhere, or grab a bus or the subway. And we don’t get any of those twenty-mile-an-hour logging trucks jamming up our streets.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re happy in New York,” she said, realizing with a pang that she wasn’t glad at all. Eating with him, cooking with him, sipping wine with him, even arguing with him—it was all too lovely, too natural, too—dare she think it?—romantic. If only he’d stay in Rockwell…But he never would. He wouldn’t linger a moment longer than necessary in this unpaved, muddy village.

  “I’m just trying to figure out how you could be happy here. I mean it, Erica. The nearest movie theater is, what, thirty miles away?”

  “Hackett’s Superette has a nice selection of video rentals.”

  Jed shook his head. “Pop Hackett refuses to stock NR-17 movies. Some Rs, too. He’s got a damn good selection of Disney flicks, if that’s what you like.”

  “Why are you so eager to put Rockwell down?” Erica challenged him. “Okay, so you like New York City. That doesn’t mean you have to bad-mouth Rockwell.”

  “I grew up here. I know what I’m talking about. This place is the end of the road—and it’s a narrow, potholed road. Anyone with half a chance tries to get out of here.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she argued. “Fern stayed.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have half a chance.”

  “It’s more than just Rockwell that drove you away,” Erica said, her mind digesting his words more easily than her stomach digested the stew. “Everything you say is true, Jed—no first-run movies, too many bars. But that’s not why you left.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “What happened? Did someone break your heart?” The question was brazen, but she had nothing to lose by asking it. Jed already thought she was crazy to want to live in Rockwell, and he wasn’t going to stay in town once his grandfather’s ashes were buried. So what if she offended him with her nosiness?

  He swallowed the last of his bread, then settled back in his chair and drank some wine. “Not a lover, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  He didn’t seem annoyed, so she dug deeper, as if she might unearth a mysterious treasure beneath his hard Yankee exterior. “Who, then?”

  “You’ve met Jack.”

  His father. She nodded slightly. “We haven’t actually gotten acquainted.”

  “Count your blessings. He’s a real son of a bitch. Leaving town was the best way to get him out of my life.”

  “What about your mother? ”

  “They split when I was maybe three or four. She married someone else when I was twelve—a huge improvement over my dad—and my senior year of high school, my stepdad got a job near Albany, so I moved in with my grandfather to finish out the year. I see my mother when I can. She’s a good woman.”

  Erica experienced a sudden urge to meet Jed’s mother. She wouldn’t mind getting acquainted with his father, either, if only so she could learn just how much of a son of a bitch the man was, how strong his influence on Jed might have been, how difficult their relationship was. She wished she’d been friendlier with Jed’s grandfather, old John Willetz, but he’d been a private person, taciturn and crusty.

  And damn, she shouldn’t care about getting to know any of them. The main reason she wanted to was that it would be a way to get closer to Jed, and that was a doomed exercise. He hated Rockwell. He wasn’t
going to stick around, no matter how close she got to him or his family.

  But his eyes were searing; his gaze, seductive. And he hadn’t insulted her cooking. He was a native of the town she longed to be a part of, a product of its soil, molded by its schools and its close-knit society, its bars and its brisk, clean air. So what if he’d left? Perhaps if she’d been born in Rockwell she would want to leave, too. But in a way, he was what she was hoping to become: self-sufficient, capable, as solid and strong as the slabs of granite that formed the town’s foundation.

  Noticing her empty glass, he lifted the bottle to pour a refill. She waved him away. “No, I’ve had enough,” she said. She felt relaxed and warm inside, but not drunk. Not drunk enough to want to risk drinking any more wine when she was feeling the way she felt about Jed right now.

  He lowered the bottle and lifted her hand, instead, folding his long, strong fingers around it. “Erica,” he said quietly.

  His eyes continued to burn into her, but his mouth curved in a smile, as if to remind her that none of this was serious or significant.

  It felt way too serious and significant to her. She rose to her feet, scrambling for a polite way to go when saying goodbye was the last thing she wanted to do.

  He stood, as well, his hand still surrounding hers, warm and hard. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving.”

  “I’m leaving.” He didn’t tighten his grip on her hand, yet she seemed unable to slide it free. “Jed, what happened last night—”

  “Was fantastic,” he said completing the sentence. “Come here.” He pulled her toward him and wrapped his other arm around her.

  “Jed.”

  He brushed his lips against her forehead. Unwanted heat spiraled down through her.

  “Jed, really. Let’s not get started.”

  “We already got started. We’re just continuing,” he said, as calmly as if they were debating semantics.

  “Let’s not continue then. You’re going to leave Rockwell, Jed. I’m going to stay.”

  “So?”

  “So, what’s the point of continuing?”

  He touched his mouth to her forehead again, a simple, devastating kiss. “The point is,” he murmured, his body as warm and hard against her as his hand had been, “we’re two adults, and we’re attracted to each other, so why not take advantage of the situation?” He lifted her hand to his mouth and grazed her knuckles.

  Oh, God, he was good. Way too good. Erica might have degrees from Harvard and Brown, but she was pretty ignorant when it came to men this good. This bad. All her book learning, all the seminars and lectures and symposia she’d attended within the ivy-covered walls of her esteemed schools, had failed to teach her how to distinguish bad from good at a time like this.

  “I’ll feel awful afterward,” she said, sounding like a skittish teenager.

  “No, you won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” He slid his free hand down her back to her waist and then back up again. She imagined his hand directly on her skin, rather than stroking her through layers of clothing, and the notion made her shudder. As long as he was touching her, she wouldn’t feel awful.

  “I meant after you’re gone.”

  “Why? We’re not talking marriage, Erica. We’re not talking commitment and forever. Just something nice and sweet and in the present.” He kissed her forehead again, then the tip of her nose and at last her mouth, her waiting, eager mouth.

  She tasted wine on his lips. She tasted heat and sex. Why not? she thought. Why not just this nice, sweet, present thing? Afterward could take care of itself.

  She reached up to cup her hands over his shoulders. He deepened the kiss and she clung to him so she wouldn’t do something awkward, like lose her balance and collapse—or start arguing about the propriety of what they were doing, what they would likely be doing in just a few minutes if this kiss didn’t cool down fast. She held on tight and let him kiss her, and kissed him back.

  He sighed, obviously sensing only her acquiescence, not her ambivalence. His tongue slid deep into her mouth and he pulled her even tighter, tangling his fingers into her hair, pressing his thighs against hers.

  She heard music, soft and tinkly, a few bars of what sounded like an old Pearl Jam song performed on a glockenspiel. She’d never heard bells from a kiss before, but she thought that if they signaled her being swept away by passion, they might play something a bit more romantic than Pearl Jam.

  Jed leaned back. She heard the same few bars of the song again. “Damn,” he said, breaking from her and moving to the refrigerator. He leaned against the counter there, breathing deeply for a moment, apparently struggling for control. On the counter next to his hands sat a cell phone. It emitted another Pearl Jam riff in gentle bell tones. “I should have ignored it,” he muttered before hitting the button and lifting it to his ear. “Jed Willetz,” he snapped into the phone. She tried to read his expression as he listened to his caller: first irritation, then bewilderment, then anger. “Derrick Messinger?” he growled. “How the hell did you get this number?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  ADD TO ALL THE THINGS Jed already didn’t like about Derrick Messinger—his phony-looking hair, his phony-sounding voice, his ego-driven, sensationalistic reports on totally stupid topics, his sweeping into town like a whirlwind of attitude—the fact that he had somehow gotten hold of Jed’s cell phone number and phoned just in time to interrupt one of the most luscious kisses Jed had ever experienced. Right now, Messinger held the number-one spot on Jed’s deserves-to-die-a-painful-death list.

  His heart was still beating a bit too hard. His groin was still feeling a bit too primed for action. Across the room, Erica watched him, her lips glistening from the kiss, her eyes slightly unfocused, her chest heaving with each uneven breath. He ought to disconnect the damn phone and carry her upstairs to bed.

  But Messinger was talking, babbling in his trademark baritone, smooth but with an edge of excitement, the sort of delivery that could make the opening of a gas station sound as though it was part of a horrible plot to destroy the world’s population of sperm whales. Messinger’s words spilled out of the phone so fast Jed couldn’t make much sense of them. Then again, his mind was miles away—or, more accurately, about ten feet away, across the room where Erica stood.

  “How did you get this number?” he asked again when Messinger paused to catch his breath.

  Messinger chuckled. “I’m an investigative reporter, Mr. Willetz. I know how to find things out.”

  The steam in Jed’s brain slowly dissipated. “My father,” he grunted. He’d given his cell phone number to his father last year, when advancing age had begun to stake its claim on Jed’s grandfather, so his father could contact him if the old man started to fail. John had died three months ago, and Jed had assumed his father would have forgotten the phone number by now, or at least forgotten where he’d placed the scrap of paper on which he’d jotted it. Apparently Jack wasn’t quite as stupid as Jed had counted on him to be. “How much did you pay him?”

  Messinger only chuckled again.

  Jed didn’t join the laughter. “It better have been a lot,” he muttered. “If he sold my number cheap—”

  Messinger shut down the chuckles with an abruptness that proved how fake they’d been. “I know there are other reporters nosing around town,” he said, “but let’s face it, I’m the marquee name. I’m the one with the resources to put together a class story about Rockwell.”

  Given how little class Rockwell had, Jed doubted that. “If you want to do a story, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to help you.”

  “Mr. Willetz.” Messinger paused for dramatic effect, then said, in a creamy, let’s-get-friendly voice, “Jed. You’re the story’s lynchpin. You’re the son of one of the town fathers.”

  If Jack Willetz was a town father, Jed was the secretary of state. “Give me a break,” he snapped. “You want to kiss butt? You’re wasting all those smooches, buddy. I’m not going to be a part of your class story.”

  He pu
lled the phone away from his ear, searching with his thumb for the off button, but Messinger’s voice drilled through the air and he lifted the phone back to his ear. “You live right next door to her. If you don’t want to contribute to what’s going to be a fair, balanced report—”

  About what? Jed wondered. How fair and balanced the citizens of Rockwell were? How fair and balanced that dirt-crusted old box Erica had dug up was?

  “You’re in a position to facilitate a meeting with my people and Erica Leitner. All we want is to talk to her, to expand our coverage of the phenomenon she unearthed in her backyard garden.”

  “It’s not a phenomenon. It’s a box.”

  “The thing is, Erica Leitner is the person I need to reach, to get the unvarnished story from the source, as it were. But she’s not home right now.”

  Jed gazed at Erica. She’d regained some control over herself. Her cheeks were no longer flushed; her breathing, no longer ragged. She got busy carrying the dirty dishes to the sink, but he could tell she was listening to his end of the conversation. “Am I supposed to know where she is?” he asked Messinger.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. The thing is, we want to narrow in on her and the box, to create a layered, textured report. Who she is. Where she lives. What the box represents.”

  “It’s a box,” Jed reminded him again. “It doesn’t represent anything.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Jed. It represents everything.” Messinger said this with such authority Jed almost believed him. Then he caught himself. To say the box represented everything was bullcrap, the inflated words of a man who inflated stories so he could satisfy his inflated ego.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jed announced into the phone. Erica had turned on the water and added a squirt of dishwashing soap to the sink.

  “Fine. I’m sure we’ll be speaking again. Meanwhile, if you happen to see your neighbor, please tell her I’m going to get her.” With a smug, silky laugh, Messinger hung up.

  At last Jed did what he should have done five minutes ago—pressed the off button. “Derrick Messinger said to tell you he’s going to get you,” he informed her.